"No," said Leland sharply; "you'll stay just where you are until the morning, though you can take your blankets into the other room as soon as you like. It's quite hard to keep my hands off you, and if you come out before I call you to make breakfast, I'm not going to try."
Jeff said nothing further, but, taking two dirty blankets out of a hay-filled bunk, shuffled away into a second room behind a log partition. Leland went after him, and, laying his hands on the little window, shook it violently.
"If you try to get out that way, we're going to hear you, and then you'll be sorry for yourself," he said.
He came back and, flinging himself into the chair beside the stove, filled his pipe.
"I don't quite know how you worried the thing out, and perhaps it doesn't greatly matter, but I rather think it was good advice he gave you," said Gallwey reflectively. "You certainly can afford to lose a horse or two, and the rustlers are the kind of people it is just as well to keep on good terms with. Sergeant Grier has only three or four troopers, and the outpost is quite a long way off."
Leland smiled. "Well," he said, "horse-stealing is getting to be a good deal more profitable business than liquor-running. They get horses for nothing, and they have to buy the whisky. They haven't gone very far into it yet, but it's a sure thing that they will if they find out that none of us seem to mind it. Somebody has to make a protest, and it may as well be me."
"So far as my observation goes, most men would rather let their neighbour make it first," said Gallwey drily. "You, however, seem to be an exception."
Leland's face hardened. "The fact is, I feel like taking it out of somebody soon. I have had a good deal to worry me."
"One would not have expected you to feel like that just now."
"I guess we'll change the subject," said Leland grimly. "You are wondering what I sent Jeff in there for? Well, I didn't want him loose on the prairie. It seems to me he's expecting a visit from his friends, and I'd just as soon they came and let me have a word with them. You get into the bunk there, and go to sleep until I want you."